Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer used to come to call on Christmas Eve only. This year, however, he is set to become a more permanent fixture in many homes.

Antlers, in their natural state, or in aluminum, chrome or wood, and fashioned into candlesticks and coat hooks and other items, are the latest hip interior accessory. No blood sports are involved: deer shed their antlers once a year. However, while the trend may be eco-friendly, it is a development of the celebrity posse’s passion for taxidermy.

Stuffed birds in a glass belljar case by Polly Morgan, an artist specialising in taxidermy, adorn the home of Kate Moss. As a result of this taste for gothic Victoriana, some early adopters of the antler craze prefer them attached to the skull of the beast, often mounted by taxidermists. The pictures of the actor Russell Brand’s Hampstead house — which went on sale this week for £2.5 million — show a diamanté-encrusted deer skull above the mantelpiece and offset by flock wallpaper. Yes, that’s back as well, part of the movement against minimalist, neutral decor, the growing fondness for colour and pattern and the new affection for the Tory grandee country house style.

John Lewis’s current bestselling cushion bears the Union Jack. This costs only £28, but it could start you longing for more country house pieces, such as the £4,995 leather and gilt secretaire from Smythson, the luxury goods company. This holds the expensive writing paper on which you pen thank-you notes (which are also back). Samantha Cameron, wife of the Tory leader, is Smythson’s creative director.

Michelle Ogundehin, editor of Elle Decoration, says that the appeal of antlers lies in a “hankering after older things, for the nostalgic and the cosy, for the authentic and the natural”. Another attraction of antlers is their price. This is a trend on which you can spend anything from £29 for a coat hook at Graham and Green to a five-figure sum for a pair of stag chairs by Rick Owens, the Californian designer.

Earlier this week, someone bought four antler candelabras at £1,575 each from Ralph Lauren’s New Bond Street store. Meanwhile, the gift shop at Lapstone, a Gloucestershire estate, has sold out of its antler line, which includes an £85 candlestick. Simon Hudson, Lapstone’s managing director, professes himself “staggered by the demand” for the antlers, which are supplied by the estate’s 5,000 red deer.

Marks & Spencer has been so encouraged by the success of a silver antler ornament that its spring 2010 range will feature a £199 wooden stag’s head. Sally Bendelow, M&S’s Head of Home, believes that homeowners are prepared “to be bolder with their interior choice, to take more risks, to bring more personality into their homes”.

This sense of freedom is a side-effect of the property market downturn. Homeowners who do not wish to move out of a sense of caution — or cannot afford to do so — are staying put. They can follow their own interior fantasies, since they do not need to show their properties to prospective buyers — who are traditionally held to prefer neutral beiges and browns and an uncluttered decor.

The homewares departments of high street names such as Next report brisk business in colourful and quirky items in compared with the tastes of the early Noughties, when beige became the dominant interior shade in the homes of the wealthy and then spread out to show flats in the suburbs.

Estate agents attributed this to the inordinate amount of time spent by the newly rich in the City in international five-star hotels. As this was the smartest thing they had ever seen, they re-created the look in their houses. The country house Tory chic look, exemplified by antlers, also apes the homes of the rich. But this time, it’s the old-money aesthetic that people are copying.

Fashion's finer points

This unlikely antler revival points to just one thing: that the once-creeping return of the Tory aesthetic is accelerating, and accelerating apace.

For months now fashion has been the arena in which middle-class Britons have flirted with the prospect of once more bending to Conservative rule.

Barbour jackets, for so long pejoratively emblematic of red-faced entitlement, are suddenly chic. Barbours come in leather now, as well as wax and quilt, and are as popular in East London as they always have been in East Anglia. It is the same story with Hunter wellington boots. This is no longer footwear suitable only for kicking the oiks off your estate, Alan B’Stard-style, but for cutting a rug at Glastonbury, or on the school run. And the kids unironically love Jack Wills, which might have been born during a Labour Government but is entirely Conservative.

This antler development is something else. Not only are we flirting with the Tory aesthetic sartorially, we are bringing it back home. Antlers, preferably dusty, are at the sharp end of a new Sloaney dawn in interior design. Expect a return of ornaments scorned in favour of minimalist lines, Nespresso machines and unfussily efficient splashbacks that paid homage to new Labour’s clean, aspirational ideology. Yet despite that, things didn’t get (much) better. It’s time for a new manifesto: think oriental rugs and roughed-up chintz soft furnishing. Cath Kidston and The General Trading Company should prepare themselves for a very rewarding few years. And as for Osborne & Little . . .

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